Captured on page 4 of the T.O.R. for the Town of Newmarket’s own Graffiti Abatement Program, it delves into policies and procedures that are in alignment with their strategic plan in 2 ways:

1.) Well Equipped and Managed – providing staff with sound policies and procedures with respect to graffiti

2.) Well Respected – ensuring that the town has plans in place to deal with graffiti in a timely manner

It is hard to believe that these key implementation pieces were not formaly captured here in Aurora.

We read in the July 2008 piece that “It was also recommended that the town partner with Crime Stoppers and the York Regional Police to establish a protocol for residents to report incidences of graffiti in Aurora via phone or email, and that the town maintain a graffiti site data base.”

This appears to have been a one off event with no evidence of a similar effort in 2013, 2014 and nothing planned for this year, making me question how sustainable and timely the Town of Aurora’s bylaw department’s efforts are with respect to graffiti in our town.

It is that database element that needs to be re-evaluated with respect to particular locations and frequency of re-offence.

Using what is available online I started with this video of grafitti posted Feb 27th 2012:

I visited the site and noticed that not only had more graffiti popped up, but one of the pieces documented in the video remained. Here’s a still from the video posted in February 2012 which would be 3 months prior to Clean Up in May of that year:

Notice how one of these tags not only failed to get cleaned up during this effort but it has remained in Aurora’s Historic Downtown Core for over 3 years:

Why?

Because a citizen didn’t report it to the town using any one of the feebly communication methods currently in place?

Are we supposed to believe that by turning a blind eye to graffiti town staff is providing Aurorans with “an exceptional quality of life for all”?

Are we also supposed to believe that by not addressing graffiti in our downtown core aligns with members of councils’ pledge to address ever elusive “downtown revitalization” efforts?

This was followed up by a letter that reads: In response to your recent letter inquiring of provincial funding that may be available to offset the cost of hiring students in connection with the removal and cleaning up of graffiti, I have not been able to identify a program that meets your objective.

In addition to enforcement measures Toronto has developed programs to help foster street artwork where money is provided for paint and supplies if property owners who have received a graffiti violation notice want to replace the vandalism with art.

Last year, 24 mural projects were completed at a cost of around $22,000.

“Our experience has been that when graffiti vandalism is replaced by graffiti art, that the graffiti art is much less frequently tagged and a lot of it is not tagged at all,”

The city’s award-winning graffiti management program has caught the attention of other cities across Canada and the U.S., which have called up for information.

“The City of Toronto’s approach is being recognized more as one that has probably the highest potential for long-term success. It brings the artists, the property owners and the police and the city and everybody together saying that surely we can do something that works for everybody,”

Aurora’s approach however appears to be one that is completely void of long-term success.

If the town has a policy why aren’t they acting on it?

This is one issue for our current council where the writing is on the wall.